Softube Releases Parallels Synth

Dual wavescanning source sections each run painstakingly recorded multi-waveforms 13/03/19

Softube has released Parallels a new software synth. Here's their press release with the details...

In Stockholm, Sweden, there’s a synth emporium like no other – a store with such vibrancy, such range, such color, that you’d need a dozen eyes and ears to take it all in. And the guy who runs it is no ordinary guy. He’s special, in all the best ways. His imagination fizzes and crackles with delight at the sounds of a million billion sparkling circuit boards.

Out of this hot-bed, this toy-box, this fantasy-factory, Parallels was born; an instrument with two sound sources, each running painstakingly recorded and exquisitely calibrated multi-waveforms from every dream-machine must-have synth you could ever want, and sculpting the resulting sounds with the highest-quality Softube filters, modulators, and effects. If you’re looking for inspiration and sheer sound-quality in your music, this is your golden ticket.

There are many possible approaches to take in creating a brand new instrument. Parallels focuses on two main things. First, it should always sound fantastic, with a minimum of fuss. And second, it should inspire the artist with elegant workflow, superb layout and visual feedback, and a sense of endless possibility.

The first point is largely down to the source material. Almost a hundred high-quality pre-recorded multi-waveforms from classic synths live at the heart of Parallels. Digital, analog, hard-wired, modular, FM, phys mod, as well as environmental and combined sources. Even some super-rare and unreleased pieces are represented.

Each waveform has a progression of some kind in its 15 second duration – a filter sweep for example – and playback can start and loop from any point of the artist’s choosing, and move through the waveform under modulation, providing almost infinite sounds-per-sound. All this with up to fourteen voices at once.

Each source can pass through its own shaper section, with a choice of three analog-modeled filter types; a state-variable filter (low, high, or band-pass), a vactrol-style low pass gate, or a triad of resonant peaks.